{"id":10040983,"date":"2025-03-14T05:19:58","date_gmt":"2025-03-14T09:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vanyaland.com\/?p=10040983"},"modified":"2025-03-15T06:30:07","modified_gmt":"2025-03-15T10:30:07","slug":"opus-review-ayo-edibiri-and-john-malkovich-rock-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vanyaland.com\/2025\/03\/14\/opus-review-ayo-edibiri-and-john-malkovich-rock-out\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Opus&#8217; Review: Ayo Edibiri and John Malkovich rock out"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em><strong>Editor\u2019s Note<\/strong>: This review originally ran as part of our extensive coverage of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, and we\u2019re reposting it today due to the film\u2019s wider national release. Scan through\u00a0our full coverage of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/vanyaland.com\/tag\/sundance-2025\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Sundance reviews<\/a>\u00a0from this year\u2019s festival, and check out our\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/vanyaland.com\/?s=Sundance\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">full archives of past editions<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As Mark Anthony Green\u2019s <strong><em>Opus<\/em><\/strong> keenly observes, magazine profiles are, if given a little abstract thought, absurdly strange things. It\u2019s not a particularly heterodox idea, either \u2014 sure, get-to-know-you profiles of public servants and community members can be (theoretically) considered a public service themselves, but the in-person celebrity profile is a fascinating form of staged performance on both sides of the tape recorder that can be easily manipulated and manicured to a guaranteed end. I remember reading an <em>Esquire<\/em> profile of Javier Bardem a decade or so ago \u2014 he and the writer went on a fishing trip and, while at sea, smoked cigarettes and talked about his fears of death in an on-brand yet compelling way \u2014 and thinking how surreal of an experience that must have been for the writer. What if their boat got hit by a rogue wave, or had its stern eaten by a Great White like in <em>Jaws<\/em>? That barrier between subject and author would have collapsed in full, and the writer, should they survive, would have the piece of a lifetime on their hands. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet, what if Bardem, less himself and more an Anton Chigurh hopped up on too many viewings of Fincher\u2019s <em>The Game<\/em>, had planned all the chaos for their own ends? All of us, when we agree to do these profiles, are happy puppets looking to dance for a crowd, a PR strategy masquerading as reportage (which shouldn\u2019t be thought of as a judgment \u2014 this kind of writing is frequently done wonderfully, and after all, we\u2019re free to write whatever we want, and free to suffer the consequences as well) in which we trade credibility for access. The power dynamic is firmly tilted in one direction, and the person with the pen ain\u2019t the shot caller.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s even worse when you\u2019re a writer like Ariel (Ayo Edibiri), who\u2019s spent years toiling away as a mid-level staffer at a premium-format magazine without a prestige piece. She\u2019s fantastic at pitch meetings, yet her ideas are thrown at the editors-at-large by her EIC, Stan (Murray Bartlett, my crush from HBO\u2019s <em>Looking<\/em>). Her off-and-on-again boyfriend (Young Mazino) thinks that it\u2019s because, well, she\u2019s kind of boring, not having the life experience to give her writing perspective. If someone says shit like that to a protagonist, you know that they\u2019re about to get some serious experience, and Ariel\u2019s ticket to that new perspective comes in the form of a bizarre gift basket. One afternoon, the newsroom is abuzz with a rumor that the reclusive Moretti (John Malkovich) \u2014 a glam-club star who is an unholy combination of Michael Jackson (in terms of record sales), Elton John (in dress), and Right Said Fred (in faux-rap monologuing over Eurobeat) \u2014 will be returning with a new record after a 30-year absence. After his publicist (Tony Hale) confirms the news in a YouTube video that looks like a ransom tape, two swag baskets are delivered to the newsroom, inviting Stan and, for some reason, Ariel to an exclusive listening party at Moretti\u2019s home in Utah. It\u2019s the opportunity of a lifetime \u2014 and Stan just wants her to take notes.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once they get out to the desert, Ariel realizes the word \u201chome\u201d doesn\u2019t really do the estate justice: It\u2019s a barb-wire fenced compound, where, behind its adobe walls, contains a Taliesin-like cult of personality. A few hundred people, known as the Levelists, live there, who follow Moretti\u2019s teachings about art and how to hone creative genius. They\u2019re all competent servants, dressed alike, sporting strange scars on their hands, and, weirdly, they all seem pretty happy out there. Once they were normal Moretti fans, and now they\u2019re his disciples, invited to live in his presence. What\u2019s weirder is how the rest of Ariel\u2019s six-person party \u2014 including Stan, a daytime TV talk show host (Juliette Lewis), an influencer, a paparazzo, and one of Moretti\u2019s old rivals \u2014 shrug this off as typical bizarre rock star behavior: \u201cTypical Moretti!\u201d and so on. It\u2019s clear this isn\u2019t Tay-Tay inviting fans over to hear her new records, bake cookies and play with her cats \u2014 there\u2019s a full-on itinerary for the weekend, and they\u2019re assigned 24\/7 concierges to help them with whatever they need (and, of course, to spy on them). After a pleasant dinner that first night, weird and violent shit starts to happen \u2014 Moretti\u2019s longtime rival goes missing, the influencer has some sort of allergic reaction to the drinks served at a performance, and Stan gets shot with an arrow (by \u201caccident\u201d). Something doesn\u2019t smell right to Ariel, and she\u2019s gonna follow her nose to uncover what it is \u2014 hopefully before Moretti finishes his grand design.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Opus<\/em> is the kind of cat-and-mouse game\u00a0well in line with other modern variations on the single-location horror comedy movie, where up-and-coming mice are ensnared by some sort of grand old campy feline. Hugh Grant had his moment with <em>Heretic<\/em>, and now Malkovich gets his turn at the all-you-can-eat celluloid buffet. He is, to put it mildly, delightful in this absurdly theatrical role, full of pop-star pretension offset by a fierce charisma. One moment, he\u2019s sparring with Edibiri about the meaning of one of his new songs, and the next he\u2019s pop-locking in a Daft Punk outfit while casually molesting his invited guests like they hired him for a group lap dance, all while his cultists cheer him on in the background. Pair that with the Nile Rodgers and The Dream-penned tracks he\u2019s performing (who are also credited as executive producers on the project), and you have a compellingly spicy antagonist. This is what these movies are typically remembered for, after all: A ferocious performance by an older actor slightly out of their usual zone, contrasted with the solid work of the younger kids, provided as a baseline. The formula works, most of the time: Their presence\u00a0gives the project some cred and puts the up-and-comer near established talent, yet it often results in a squash match. The older talent always wins, and how could they not?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With Green\u2019s help, Edibiri refuses to let Malkovich take all of the good shit at the salad bar. Ariel is one of the best protagonists that the modern iteration of the \u201ctrap\u201d horror-comedy has seen, because she\u2019s not passive, nor is she looking for an exit from the first minute onwards. She\u2019s witty, sympathetic, and well-rounded \u2014 a thoroughly well-credentialed straight man sent in to match the energy and charm of a bunch of Gen X Jerry Lewises and their acolytes. She\u2019s suspicious, of course, but she\u2019s willing to roll with the strangeness (and the disappointment of being sidelined by her editor), and Ariel\u2019s interactions with Moretti are smartly written exchanges \u2014 like what you\u2019d hope one of these profiles would be like if you cracked the spin on a copy of <em>GQ<\/em> or <em>British Vogue<\/em> and flipped to A Profile of the Recluse as an Old Man. Their energy blesses the whole movie with a truly life-giving breath, and takes it from running along with its genre-peer pack to a hair\u2019s breadth of damn near leading the race. <em>Opus<\/em> is a wonderfully entertaining film, and, as far as the Boston vs. Cambridge angle is concerned, I think it\u2019s a draw. Both Edibiri and Malkovich are amazing. So, Go Sox or whatever.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Editor\u2019s Note: This review originally ran as part of our extensive coverage of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, and we\u2019re reposting it today due to the film\u2019s wider national release. Scan through\u00a0our full coverage of\u00a0Sundance reviews\u00a0from this year\u2019s festival, and check out our\u00a0full archives of past editions. As Mark Anthony Green\u2019s Opus keenly observes, magazine profiles are, if given a little abstract thought, absurdly strange things. It\u2019s not a particularly heterodox idea, either \u2014 sure, get-to-know-you profiles of public servants [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":10040608,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19452],"tags":[35352,26409,15008,9538,21272,35309,11434],"class_list":["post-10040983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-filmtv","tag-ayo-edibiri","tag-header","tag-john-malkovich","tag-opus","tag-sundance","tag-sundance-2025","tag-sundance-film-festival"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>&#039;Opus&#039; Review: Ayo Edibiri and John Malkovich rock out<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"&#039;Opus&#039; 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